Roundtable Entitled “Political Abuse of Rights”

On Tuesday January 17, 2012 the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies hostedDr. Jasbir k. Puar, associate professor - women's and gender studies/ Rutgers University, for a roundtable discussion concerning “Political Abuse of Rights”. During this roundtable discussion Dr. Puar spoke about her book “Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times”, in which she discussed the emergence of what she termed homonationalism--the co-production and gay and lesbian rights, consumer entitlements, circuits of mobility, and livable lives with the simultaneous delimitation of the mobility and rights of racialized bodies, in particular those bodies racialized as "terrorist." For instance, after 11/9 there appeared an anti-Muslim sentiment where anxiety about terrorist bodies was apparent.

Dr. Puar connected between the content and topic of her study with the Israel/Palestine question, wherein Israel is taking advantage of supporting gays and lesbians rights in order to show the world how modernized Israel is at the expense of overshadowing its occupation over Palestinian territories. For instance,  gays in Israel are given their rights and freedoms at the expense of sustaining the Israeli occupation which Dr. Puar counters.  She also illustrated the concept of homonationalism which is a normalized, racialized ideology built on shifts in neoliberal economic plans and domestication of resources. Furthermore, she indicated how Homonationalsim is another way to point to neoliberalism and normalize homosexuality. In the US,  Neoliberalist are advocating gays rights and normalizing homosexuality, and they continue or extend the project of US imperial expansion endemic to the war on terror.